Combination sheeter and wrapping machine



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COMBINATION SHEETER AND wRAPPING MACHINE 18 Sheets-Sheet 18 original Filed Maron 7, 1949 Patented Aug. 31, 1954 COMBINATION SHEETER AND WRAPPING MACHINE Mark H. Corley, River Forest, Bengt A. Arvidson,

` Villa Park,

and Ralph F. Barber, Elmhurst, Ill.,

assignors to Miller Wrapping & Sealing Machine Co., Chicago, Ill., a corporation of Illinois Original application March 7, 1949, Serial No. 79,956, now Patent No. 2,654,196, dated October 6, 1953. Divided and this application December 8, 1951, Serial No. 261,262

pose because of its quick and easy adaptabilityl to the Wrapping and sealing of packages of diverse sizes and proportions.` But the utility of the present machine is not in any sense limited or largely confined to the bakery trade. On the contrary, certain of the major features of this invention are more concerned with the packaging of products such as butter,A ice cream and the like,

which cannot, Without injury, be subjected to prolonged high temperatures, while still other features are concerned with special Wrapping problems having to do, for example, with articles which are exceptionally thin, or extraordinarily bulgy, or of unusually light Weight-characteristics rarely encountered in baked goods normally` packaged by machines of the kind here dealt with.

A sheeter, as that term is employed herein, is a piece of equipment Which may be aseparate and distinct entity or, alternatively, an integral part of the wrapping and sealing machine; the function of the sheeter is to cut Wrapping material into pieces of identical size, each suitable for wrapping a particular article or unit group of articles, and operative to deliver the cut sheets, one at a time, to a point within easy reach of the operator, or to a predetermined position at which a step in the wrapping operation is to be i performed. Such equipment can be and sometimes is utilized independently of a Wrapping machine; but ordinarily it is not so employed; and in the typical embodiments of the invention herein described the sheeters are, in each instance, part and parcel of the Wrapping machines themselves.

The machines hereinafter described are classied as semi-automatic because a part of the `wrapping operation is performed by the operator,

manually. This consists in placing an article-tobe-wrapped, or a prescribed quantity of material, as the case may be, on a sheet of Wrapping material of appropriate size, folding the sheet around the article or material in the manner of a band,

and then manually inverting the banded article I .and placing the same on the Wrapping machine in position to be acted upon thereby. The abovedescribed manual operation is known and referred to herein as the banding operation; and an article With a sheet of wrapping material banded therearound is referred to as a banded article.

But the latter term ceases to be discriminative or apposite When the succeeding end-folding operations have been performed on the Wrapper, and is not employed herein with reference to a package which has progressed beyond the initial banded stage.

The Wrapping material most commonly used is moisture-proof cellophane. Such a material is advantageous because superimposed layers can quickly be bonded together through mere application of heat. This makes it easy to hermetically seal all Wrapper overlaps, thus rendering the packages moisture-tight; and the machines herein described are equipped to perform the heat-sealing operations, in addition to the folding operations at the two ends of each package. Moistureproof cellophane, however, is not the only Wrapping material suitable for use with wrapping machines of the kind here dealt with; and at least one of the features of the subject invention pertains especially to a problem having to do exclusively With the use of non-heat-sealing wrapj ping material.

One of the objects of the present invention, which for reference purposes will be designated as the rst object, is to expedite the manual portion of the Wrapping operation; and to that end the sheeter has been modified so that it delivers the `cut sheets of cellophane or other Wrapping material, one at a time, to a position Whereat the band- `perform the banding operation quickly, with a minimum of effort, and resultantly increasing his potential output.

A second object has also to do with the banding operation, and to that end we have found that substantial time savings can be eected by providing, in conjunction with the belt conveyor of the sheeter, a trough-like arrangement which is effective to turn upwardly the sides or flies of the wrapper when an article-to-be-wrapped is deposited thereon at the banding position on the conveyor. This improvement enables the operator quickly, and without impediment, to place his hands underneath the two flies of the wrapperwhich he must do in order to carry out the banding operationand thus obviates the delay incident to any difficulty the operator might otherwise experience in that respect. Maximum output per machine is inherently dependent upon performance of the multitudinous banding operations with the utmost dispatch; and it follows, as a matter of course, that oft-repeated delays caused by the wrappers lying flat are soon evidenced in noticeably diminished output. 'The organization which has been found most effective in this connection includes a belt conveyor ccmprising numerous laterally spaced, narrow, ilexible belts in combination with a pair of strips or cleats located immediately below the upper span of the conveyor and adapted to be adjustably spaced apart laterally of the conveyor in conformity with the length of the article-to-bewrapped-the spacing between the strips being, in each instance, sufficient to admit one such article at a time therebetween. When an article is deposited on a wrapper lying on the conveyor at the banding position, it is so placed by the operator that it will descend by gravity into the space between the aforementioned strips, and the ensuing downward movement of the article, abetted by the action of the strips, causes the flies of the wrapper to be deflected upwardly.

A third object of the invention is two-fold in nature, being (1) to facilitate placement of the banded articles on the track of the wrapping machine, and (2) to prevent inadvertent displacement of the pusher carriages from their initial or at rest positions. The pusher carriages are propelled by a pusher bar and, prior to this invention, have been equipped with so-called hooks extending upwardly therefrom and designed to be engaged by the pusher bar for the purpose of mechanically coupling the carriages to the pusher bar. The upwardly projecting hooks or corresponding elements have proved to be obstacles which considerably impede the operator in placement of the banded articleson the track of the wrapping machine, and, what is perhaps an even greater detriment, these hooks are wholly detached from the pusher bar when the machine is at rest, so that it is possible for the pusher carriages to be inadvertently displaced from their normal at rest positions, thereby giving rise to an ever-present liability of damage being done to packages in process. We have overcome the above-indicated deficiencies through the provision of anew kind of linkage coupling between the pusher bar and each pusher carriage, as will be set forth at length in the detailed description hereinafter.

A fourth object of this invention is to render practicable the wrapping and sealing in moistureproof cellophane or the like of products such as butter and ice cream on a wrapping and sealing machine which is designed primarily for packaging products which are not susceptible of injury as a consequence of being subjected to heat-sealing temperatures for relatively prolonged periods. When the product to be packaged is not especially heat-sensitive, it is preferable to utilize a moderate sealing temperature and allow the packages to remain in contact with the hot plates for a somewhat extended period; but that cannot be done with heat-sensitive products such, for example, as butter and ice cream because the heat would penetrate into the product with obviously disastrous consequences. But it has been found that if a cellophane-wrapped package is subjected to a substantially higher temperature for a much shorter period, the sealing can be effected satisfactorily without damage to the product, because there is not sufficient time for the heat to penetrate deeply. We have, accordingly devised a so-called push-through mechanism, in the form of a modified pusher carriage, capable of being substituted in place of the more conventional pusher carriages and effective to move each package from the loading position to the far side of the heat-sealing zone at a single stroke of the pusher bar-all of which is accomplished without the necessity of altering the machine in any other respect and at comparatively little cost.

A fifth object is to provide an improved and' simplified underlapping-wing-ap actuating mechanism, the features of which can best be presented in conjunction with the subsequent detailed description.

A sixth object is to provide effective means for applying solvent to the tip portions of the top end flaps of the wrappers when such tip portions are to be underlapped-which is to say, folded under and into contact with the bottom surface of the wrapper; and more especially so when the sheet wrapping material is cellophane or the like of the non-heat-sealing variety. An application of appropriate solvent, such as acetone, renders the said tip portions momentarily agglutinant and thus capable of instantly adhering to the said bottom contacting surface, thereby firmly securing the wrapper notwithstanding its want of the heat-sealing properties which characterize moisture-proof cellophane. We have been able successfully to achieve the instant object through a novel arrangement involving the use of solvent applicators (each including a solvent reservoir) comprising wicks carried by the respective upfolding fingers and movable vertically therewith. As the top-folding units descend and engage the top end iiaps, they press the same downwardly against the solvent-saturated applicators; but immediately following contact, the up-folding fingers start descending, together with the solvent applicators, so that the latter are moved downwardly to make way for the top-folding and underlapping operations, while at the same time remaining in contact with the said tip portions, thereby ensuring a good and suilicient application of solvent immediately before the tip portions are pressed into contact with the under surface of the wrapper, thus limiting to a virtual minimum the interval during which solvent evaporation can occur.

A seventh object pertains to the provision of means adapted to facilitate the wrapping of articles which are quite thin, or which consist of bulgy material lacking propensity to lie flat, and other items having so little weight as to be incapable of counteracting the slight force involved in folding the end flaps of the wrapper; and to that end we have devised what we call hold-down mechanisms which automatically move into place and bear down slightly on the end margins of each banded article, after the same has been placed on the track of the wrapping machine, and which are effective, both to hold the banded articles down on the track and to flatten the end portions of bulgy articles so as to enable a neat end folding job to be performed by the machine. Two species of package 

